1. Field of the Invention
All the referenced patents have been granted for the specifications of engine designs, whereas none of them seriously examined the possibility of acquiring free energy by operating such engines. Presently known input-output analysis does not assume output power becoming greater than input power in any thermal, combustion, or electro/mechanical system due to laws of thermodynamics. A generic buoyancy engine is first defined, and its refinements are subsequently identified in this specification. Comprehensive math models are discussed for the first time in this field of application. Potential methods for acquiring free energy, thus boosting output/input power ratio above unity, are discussed in detail.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The basic design concept of Johnson, loc. cit., and Simpson, loc. cit., are used in the following definition. A generic bouyancy engine consists of a plurality of airtight open top, solid box containers (upright to fill water; upside down to fill air) securely mounted on two parallel, vertically positioned, endless (notched, unnotched, bicycle chained, or in combination thereof) conveyer belts, partially submerged in a water column and spanning tightly between conveyer wheels on axles, of which one set is kept dry above the surface and the other submerged at the bottom, whereas buoyancy of the air filled containers floating upward through the water column provides the action of the engine for output power system and the downward moving water filled containers are driven to the bottom for air ingestion.
Various bucket designs, different from the solid box containers, had been considered. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,031 Johnson used a plurality of collapsible awning-shaped air buckets, each comprised of two hinged solid panels and flexible ends, fully inflated with air in the ascending column, and collapsed in the descending column. Although the collapsed buckets reduced the exposed area of the descending column, the ascending column showed sawtooth-like discontinuities of surfaces as seen in side way cross section, which induced fluid turbulence and increased the surface resistance and friction in water. The flexible ends allowed the air bucket to collapse, but did not serve for smoothing or modifying water flow. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,294, Everett used two distinct types of gas filled buckets, one, solid and incollapsible in ovoid in cross section, and, the other, collapsed in narrow descending column and fully inflated into box shape in ascending column. Both types of buckets fit tightly inside constrictive fluid channels, and were stacked with little spacing inbetween. To make the buckets of the second type collapse at the fluid surface, two curved panels were used to force them into narrow tight spacing and to reconfigure into the collapsed shape. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,981,015 Simpson showed a totally submerged system with tightly stacked air buckets with no spacing inbetween, which opened up and spread out, like the spokes of open hand waving fan, at bottom and at top for air ingestion and discharge. The stacked ascending/descending columns formed continuous surfaces with small indentations between successive buckets. However, the discontinuous surfaces of the open spread out containers at the top and bottom both induced sizable water resistance and frictions. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,147 Brassea used sectioned self-contained gas filling chambers with pivoting louver slats, open/close slit vents, and sliding doors, all actuated by hydraulic servomechanism managed by local controllers, instead of simple bucket containers. Implementation of such a system was expected to be quite expensive.
In all the referenced patents, air, or gas, was injected into containers in the form of bubbles, not as steady air/gas streams as proposed in this invention. The significance of this difference would become clear shortly. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,147, Brassea made use of conventional gas turbine and vortex generating nozzle to capture energy of residual heat in gas at various circulation stages of operating gas. The design concept of this vortex gas expander differed significantly from creation of steady air stream at depth using simultaneous generation of both air and water vortices as proposed in the present invention.
A short discussion of "perpetual machine" must be presented, cf. R. Feynman, et al., Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol.I, pp.13-4 to 13-5, Addison Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1963. By construction a perpetual machine must operate along a closed circuit without changing its specification. In case of the generic buoyancy engine, the air inside bucket containers must be pushed down from the surface to the bottom, and then allowed to rise in the ascending column. In such a case, the air filled containers on both ascending/descending columns are in perfect balance, and therefore no movement can ever be induced. Such a machine cannot perform any work. An equivalent situation arises if a compressor is used to feed air at the bottom by counteracting the water pressure at the depth. Under ideal conditions the compressor consumes the same amount of energy as pushing the air in containers from the surface to the bottom in the descending column. The actual energy consumed is however expected to be slightly higher than the energy spent in pushing the air from the surface, because of the compressor heat loss, air conduction loss, etc.
Douglas C. Giancoli's Physics for Scientists and Engineers, pp.297-299, 2nd ed., Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliff, N.J. 1989, defines the buoyant force as the one which arises from the fact that the pressure in a fluid increases with depth, and that the upward pressure on the bottom surface of a submerged object is greater than the downward pressure on its top surface. The pressure at depth h for a water density .rho. is given by .rho.gh where g is the gravitational constant 980 cm/sec.sup.2. The buoyant force at depth h becomes equal the weight mg of water mass m of the cylinder; with the given base area at depth h the potential energy of the buoyancy is given by the familiar E=mgh.